Error Message : Cannot find or open the PDB file

Question

I tried running sample programs provided at NVIDIA's official site. Most of the programs ran smoothly except few where I get similar error messages. How can I fix that? Here's a sample of error message I got after running a program named "MatrixMul".

Note: I have installed both x32 and x64 NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit v5.0 on my Window7x64 OS.

'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\ProgramData\NVIDIA Corporation\CUDA Samples\v5.0\bin\win32\Debug\matrixMul.exe', Symbols loaded. 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\KernelBase.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit\CUDA\v5.0\bin\cudart32_50_35.dll', Binary was not built with debug information. 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\apphelp.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\AppPatch\AcLayers.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sspicli.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcrt.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\rpcrt4.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cryptbase.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sechost.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\user32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\gdi32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\lpk.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\usp10.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\advapi32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shell32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\shlwapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ole32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\oleaut32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\userenv.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\profapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\winspool.drv', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\mpr.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\imm32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msctf.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\nvinit.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\nvcuda.dll', Binary was not built with debug information. 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\setupapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cfgmgr32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\devobj.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dwmapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Unloaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dwmapi.dll' 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\nvapi.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\version.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wintrust.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\crypt32.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file 'matrixMul.exe': Loaded 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msasn1.dll', Cannot find or open the PDB file The thread 'Win32 Thread' (0x12fc) has exited with code 0 (0x0). The thread 'Win32 Thread' (0x18a0) has exited with code 0 (0x0). The program '[3104] matrixMul.exe: Native' has exited with code 0 (0x0) 

Answer 1

The PDB file is a Visual Studio specific file that has the debugging symbols for your project. You can ignore those messages, unless you're hoping to step into the code for those dlls with the debugger (which is doubtful, as those are system dlls). In other words, you can and should ignore them, as you won't have the PDB files for any of those dlls (by default at least, it turns out you can actually obtain them when debugging via the Microsoft Symbol Server). All it means is that when you set a breakpoint and are stepping through the code, you won't be able to step into any of those dlls (which you wouldn't want to do anyways).

Just for completeness, here's the official PDB description from MSDN:

A program database (PDB) file holds debugging and project state information that allows incremental linking of a Debug configuration of your program. A PDB file is created when you compile a C/C++ program with /ZI or /Zi

Also for future reference, if you want to have PDB files for your own code, you would would have to build your project with either the /ZI or /Zi options enabled (you can set them via project properties --> C/C++ --> General, then set the field for "Debug Information Format"). Not relevant to your situation, but I figured it might be useful in the future